Three Big Lies Perpetuated by the Plutocrats and Their Congressional

Original Link: http://thelonggoodbye.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/fantasy-summer-wallpaper-three-big-lies-perpetuated-by-the-plutocrats-and-their-congressional-republican-minions/

By Paul Buchheit

1. Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators

A recent Treasury analysis found that only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

As for job creation, it’s not coming from the people with money. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of the investable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups.

The Wall Street Journal noted, in way of confirmation, that the extra wealth created by the Bush tax cuts led to the “worst track record for jobs in recorded history.”

Covered here and in various places before. Taxes will be low enough for conservatives when people starve rather than get food assistance. When grandma dies instead of getting Medicare. When millions of Americans die because conservatives have repealed health care reform (the ACA, New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage). Taxes will be low enough when the federal government cannot stop mining companies from putting 12 year olds back to work in mines. Taxes will be low enough when the gov’mint cannot stop the Koch brothers from poisoning your family. When cannot really say these things. These basic truths because gosh they sound so mean. What political movement would stand for such things. The broadcast media certainly is not going to call out Republicans on the substance of their agenda. Matt Lauer for example, seems like a nice guy and that is the problem, he and every other “news” host in the morning is more worried about being popular and getting ratings than calling a radical agenda, a radical agenda. This is an example of what happens when conservatives paint a target on your back, Thanks to Michele Bachmann(R-Minn.) Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin Gets Extra Police Protection. I’ve heard that HBO’s The Newsroom has its fans and critics, but imagine that kind of reporting on the morning infotainment shows or what is euphemistically called the evening news. Instead we have the watered down tripe of conservative bedwetter’s dreams. An ignorant citizenry is a good citizenry as far as Republicans are concerned.

2. Individual initiative is all you need for success.

President Obama was criticized for a speech which included these words: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

‘Together’ is the word that winner-take-all conservatives seem to forget. Even the richest and arguably most successful American, Bill Gates, owes most of his good fortune to the thousands of software and hardware designers who shaped the technological industry over a half-century or more. A careful analysis of his rise shows that he had luck, networking skills, and a timely sense of opportunism, even to the point of taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own.

Of course one has to have some initiative to start a business, but no one has ever done so without the kind of modern civilization made possible by the wealthy paying their share of the burden. A Fox news host recently made the argument, wow, the rich pay forty percent of the taxes. So what. They should be paying more. A millionaire whose income comes mostly from capital gains has a tax rate of 15%. That is lower than a Wisconsin teacher who makes $40k a year. There is a third myth, but let me insert this poll first, The Hill Poll: Majority of voters blame president for bad economy

Two-thirds of likely voters say the weak economy is Washington’s fault, and more blame President Obama than anybody else, according to a new poll for The Hill.
It found that 66 percent believe paltry job growth and slow economic recovery is the result of bad policy. Thirty-four percent say Obama is the most to blame, followed by 23 percent who say Congress is the culprit. Twenty percent point the finger at Wall Street, and 18 percent cite former President George W. Bush.

[ ]…While voters feel Obama carries a greater portion of the blame than others, the poll found almost 6-in-10 are unhappy with the actions of Republicans in Congress who have challenged the president on an array of policy initiatives.

Fifty-seven percent of voters said congressional Republicans have impeded the recovery with their policies, and only 30 percent overall believe the GOP has done the right things to boost the economy. ( Obama also has more confidence among independents, bad news for Mittens)

The thing is that Wall Street, corporate America, the bankers are enjoying a full economic recovery. The jobs just are not there and Republicans in the House, where they have a majority will not vote for an job creation bills – they have voted to repeal the ACA 33 times. Even though Democrats have a slight majority in the Senate, Republicans threaten to filibuster everything so again, no jobs bills – there is a very slim chance of Democrats in the Senate getting a super majority of 60, thus killing the parliamentary obstruction of Republicans.

3. A booming stock market is good for all of us

The news reports would have us believe that happy days are here again when the stock market goes up. But as the market rises, most Americans are getting a smaller slice of the pie.

In a recent Newsweek article, author Daniel Gross gushed that “The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records.”
But the richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stock market. What Mr. Gross referred to as the “democratization of the stock market” is actually, as demonstrated by economist Edward Wolff, a distribution of financial wealth among just the richest 5% of Americans, those earning an average of $500,000 per year.

Think of the US economy as a value producing machine. Labor goes in and capital comes out. When the plutocrats divide up that capital they’re trickling down on the American labor force, and conservatives like it that way. I did a recent post on the subject of who were the real capitalists, but this one has a lot more statistics and charts, Democrats Crush Republicans as Capitalists in the White House

From the internet rag known non-ironically, as Hot Air (Michelle Malkin and her posse), Flashback: Obama praised welfare work requirements his administration just gutted. posted at 4:01 pm on July 20, 2012 by Rob Bluey

During his run for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama praised the work requirements that were the centerpiece of welfare reform — the very requirements his administration just gutted last week.

[ ]…Obama’s administration last Thursday gutted the work requirements that were part of reforms to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program in 1996. The welfare reform law became a signature accomplishment for President Bill Clinton and the Republican-led Congress.

Bob is too lazy to do his research or he is lying. Anyway it good that they bring up the subject at all. It is an embarrassment to the internet trolls and Fox News who spread the urban myth about federal giveaways where people can live in luxury at government expense. TANF has a forty hour work week requirement. You can only collect it for a total of five years out of your entire lifetime. You literally cannot own anything to get it. If you still live in a house and drive a twenty year old beater, you’re most likely disqualified. Another factoid that ruins this Obama is giving free tax payer stuff away narrative is that the changes in TANF are good for the states, business, the unemployed and even right-wing hero Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi likes it, Stimulus Jobs on State’s Bill in Mississippi

“I applied for everything, found nothing,” said Ms. Bolton, 37.

That finally changed when the two were hired by a paper-napkin factory here last month, placing them in the vanguard of a new approach that Mississippi and a growing number of states are taking to get people working again. Their salaries will initially be paid by the State of Mississippi, which is tapping into a relatively small pot of welfare money in last year’s stimulus package that can be used to subsidize jobs directly.

Now they are being trained on the machines here at the Hattiesburg Paper Company, learning to turn mammoth rolls of paper into folded dinner napkins and toilet paper. The general manager, Steve Swiggum, said the state’s offer to subsidize the salaries helped push the company to accelerate its hiring.

[ ]…If the idea of subsidized jobs is seen as liberal in some circles, it seems to have bipartisan appeal at the state level. Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans, said he saw the state’s program as being in the spirit of the welfare overhaul.
“It’s welfare to work,” he said.

The state can spend up to $43 million on the program, which officials estimate could create as many as 3,500 jobs — the equivalent of several factory openings, but only a small dent in the problem for a state that had 133,000 unemployed residents in December. Only a few dozen workers have been hired since the program began last month after receiving federal approval.

Mississippi’s decision to pay for jobs in the private sector means that the public is paying to create jobs that will provide little public benefit. But Mr. Barbour said he believed it to be the best way to improve the economy.

The last program similar to this one was signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon, ended during the Reagan administration. That one did go on for too long and became abused toward the end, but it did put people to work. Again, the amount of money involved is a drop in the bucket compared to the subsidies, tax breaks and giveaways to big business.

Preview: Chris Hedges on Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’

BILL MOYERS: Fit this all together for me. What does the suffering of the Native American on the Pine Ridge Reservation have to do with the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia have to do with the inner-city African-American in Camden have to do with the single man working for m– minimum wage or less in Immokalee, Florida? What ties that all together?

CHRIS HEDGES: Greed. It’s greed over human life. And it’s the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings. That’s a common thread. And I think when you use the word “complicit,” it’s true. We — in that biblical term — we forgot our neighbor. And because we forgot our neighbor in Pine Ridge, because we forgot our neighbor in Camden, in Southern West Virginia, in the produce fields, these forces have now turned on us. They went first, and we’re next.